EP Review Fräulein - A Small Taste

Poking their calloused, alt-rock fingertips into grunge pies of ‘90s nostalgia, debut EP ‘A Small Taste’ offers a neat packaging for all the virtues Fräulein have acquired thus far. Pithy, three-minute numbers spider up, down, along and across, working the classically-proven quiet-loud-quiet equations; while deceptively simple riffs and melodic frameworks scaffold arresting song-structures. And each moment is underlain with the rancour of threat and tension. Powered by Karsten van der Tol’s iron-cast rhythms, vocalist/guitarist Joni Samuels spices each vocal with unspoken menaces which we dare not probe into: lines like “I’m free / Totally / Use me / Entirely” feel as creepy as they are empowering. While so clearly forged in the mould of its predecessors - The Breeders, PJ Harvey to name but two - there’s a freshness to Fraülein’s tune which shouldn’t be ignored.